abstract than [ bleep ]. >> the repulsive logic became part of the party playbook. in1976ronaldreagantoldstories about the so-called welfare queen in an effort to scare white voters. and the very same lee atwater made the willie horton ad a key part of george h.w. bush's 1988 bid for the white house. and in 2012 the same ugliness took center stage in the gop primary. >> we know president obama is the best food stamp president in american history. >> i don't want to make black people's lives better by giving them somebody else's money. i want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money. >> you're doing it because you care about america. paul and i have not promised you a bigger check from the government. >> as atwater said, the message is coded. but what he's getting at is crystal clear. joining me now is toure, host of "the cycle" here on msnbc, and the man who tracked down the atwater tape, james carter iv. he's an opposition researcher and the grandson of president jimmy carter. thank you both for coming on the show. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> james, first of all

. bill bradley and i started with the first bill on this, andthenronaldreaganpickedit up and really carried at, and we got it done in a bipartisan way. when we did our original bill, we took out a mortgage deduction, we took out the charitable deduction, we took out everything, and we got right down to christie, it was 10%, 50%, 25% was the top rate, and we thought it was an elegant bill, but it could not pass muster political. we had all the real estate people and all the mortgage bankers and everybody came to town and said you get rid of the mortgage interest deduction is the end of the world, so we lost that. and all the university presidents and all the priests and all the other charities came and said you cannot get rid of that. the only thing we call on to was state and local income tax, and how we hang -- hung on to that i would never know. in the end, we were able to lower individual rates by taking more money from the corporate side, which i do not think you can do now. everybody is saying that corporate rate is too high in america, said to be competitive we have to get at